About PrivacyNet

Privacy, data security, piracy. They are all major issues that affect content producers, creatives and startups. PrivacyNet presents compelling sources and the latest about developments in these fields. It is produced by Gordon Platt, an attorney, a former Emmy Award winning investigative journalist and founder of Gotham Media, a content marketing and strategic communications company.

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If you’ve ever placed a Post-It note over your laptop’s webcam “just in case,” this one’s for you: Digital Citizens Alliance has found hackers not just hijacking users’ computer cameras, but posting tutorials showing how anyone can accomplish this unnerving feat.

What makes this even more galling is that the videos aren’t appearing on some deep, dark corner of the web, where online bad guys have to dig to find them. No, instead you – and everyone else – can find such hacking videos on YouTube, the world’s biggest video sharing platform.

Content RATs

The report highlights a hacking technique called the Remote Access Trojan – or RAT – which allows the intruder to take control over many aspect of a user’s computer, from speaker and microphone to the webcam, which lets them peer into the world of anyone who hasn’t covered up their camera. Unsurprisingly, that’s most of us, but that trust is clearly misplaced, thanks in no small part to YouTube’s permissive upload parameters.

When it comes down to it, we shouldn’t be surprised to see this kind of content on YouTube, a Google-owned company. Both video site and search engine results have been home to illegal and unpleasant content for years, with Google preferring a flag-and-remove system to any kind of responsible policing of the sites and content it serves up.

This year alone, YouTube has been criticized for a series of questionable content uploads, including:

With a track record like this, and with years of failing to remove objectionable and illegal content from its results, are we really surprised to see Google properties profiting from this kind of unpleasantness?

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Following the widespread media coverage of this problem, YouTube has unsurprisingly removed the offending content. That’s the step forward, if it can be called such.

Unfortunately, this is shutting the digital stable door after the hacker has bolted.

The phenomenon is now widely covered, which means it is widely known. Even if YouTube and Google manage to filter their results to remove such tutorials, which would not be in keeping with their past responses, budding hackers will now be more inclined to dig up these guides elsewhere.

The rabid cat is out of the bag and YouTube had the biggest hand in opening it.

The original Digital Citizens Alliance report is entitled Selling Slaving, which highlights another objectionable part of this practice: the fact that intermediaries that host this content, including YouTube, are often allowing advertising income to flow to the creators. As middle-men they also take the lion’s share of that ad revenue, which is clearly dirty money.

As the earlier examples demonstrate, this is no isolated incident. Rather, it is a byproduct of a poorly managed content system that allows almost anything to be uploaded, viewed, and even to accrue ad revenue, before eventually being flagged for removal and taken down. As the frustratingly ineffective DMCA process shows, this barely puts a bump in the way of pirates and hackers, let alone a barrier.

As leaders in this space – and primary gateways to any kind of online content imaginable – those behind policy-making at Google and YouTube need to finally show some leadership in managing what makes it onto their platforms.

If they fail to do so after so many high-profile oversights in little more than six months, it will only lend credence to the allegations from creative rights advocates, that Google is all too willing to turn a blind eye to illegal content when there’s a buck or two to be made.

European lawmakers and American technology companies rarely make good bedfellows, particularly when it comes to matters of privacy. That tension has been tested time and again in courts around the EU, with Germany proving particularly critical of U.S. companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook.

German privacy laws are closely tied to European Union law and regulators have a strong desire to standardize requirements across the country, as well as other member states in the long-term.

Other German regulators have tried to remove this requirement in the past, but Facebook has avoided these attempts by falling back on Irish privacy law, where regulators are less motivated to pursue the company because it is a major employer in Dublin. Ireland examined the privacy concerns over real names in 2011 and okayed the policy, despite the potential conflict with wider European law.

Since then, Google’s loss in the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ ruling has changed the landscape. Forcing privacy requirements upon one tech company but not other major players has given regulators in Germany renewed motivation to call on Facebook to remove the requirement.

Despite the obvious tension between European regulators and U.S. tech companies, opposition to Facebook’s policy has not been limited to the other side of the Atlantic.

Here at home, the company’s real names policy is the subject of criticism by diverse groups, from indigenous populations whose names Facebook’s algorithm has a tendency to reject, to intergender individuals who identify themselves in a variety of ways. In either case, the social network is accused of being insensitive to personal preference and our right to choose how we identify ourselves online.

These ongoing privacy questions are par for the course for Facebook, which is regularly challenged on the data it collects from users and how it parlays that information into advertising profits. Last year, the social network was taken to task over its emotional experiments with what it selects for our newsfeeds, and earlier this month we reported on an algorithm the company is developing to recognize faces when they are only partially visible or obscured.

Even with all of these distractions, however, Facebook is going from strength to strength on the stock market. Its quarterly results, announced yesterday, continue to show the kind of consistent growth that keeps investors coming back for more. That being the bottom line, it seems likely that Facebook will continue to deflect such challenges until someone finds grounds to elevate the matter to the European Court of Justice, as was the case with Google.

Whether or not opponents in either country succeed in repealing real names will come down to the courts, but given the size and reach of the popular social network, any decision will have far-reaching ramifications for the way social networks ask users to identify themselves online.

“Oh, I heard it through the grapevine
And I’m just about to lose my mind.”

~Marvin Gaye

Facepalm moment (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Okay, so the late, great singer was lamenting lost love, but there are many kinds of rumour and they can be anything from minor to mind-blowing.

We’re somewhere in the middle with a recent misunderstanding of copyright law, which while benign in nature does have the potential to channel otherwise positive support for creators in an unhelpful direction.

As the link above explains, the confusion occurred when one illustrator warned fellow visual artists, via a podcast, that proposed upcoming changes to intellectual property registration would push ownership into the private sector.

The reality is that a mixture of different copyright news has been digested, conflated, and regurgitated on the other side as a confused chimera of the original issues, breathing a righteous fire on behalf of artists without fully understanding that it could burn its own kind.

David Newhoff does an excellent job of setting the record straight here, and we’ve talked about the copyright review process a lot elsewhere, so we’ll simply focus on the kind of creative feedback that really is helpful for artists to offer on the subject of revising copyright law.

Express Yourself

The silver lining of this misunderstanding is that it serves to shine a light on the value of artists speaking up on issues of copyright and protecting their intellectual property.

Too often it’s the creative voices that are subsumed by the commercial ones, making it difficult to get to the heart of what artists really want, and the support they need from lawmakers to help control their work.

The original initiative that confused and catalyzed the situation described above actually holds some very valuable questions for all creators, once you take the time to understand the nuances of what the Copyright Office is trying to achieve. That was a Notice of Inquiry, for which the consultation period has now ended, but artists of all types can consider the questions it raises and better support lawmakers to make copyright protections more effective.

Here are those questions, adapted from their original focus on visual arts so that they might benefit all creative forms:

What are the most significant challenges related to monetizing and/or licensing your work?

What are the most significant enforcement challenges when trying to protect your work?

What are the most significant barriers to registering and monitoring use of what you create?

Are there major challenges or frustrations for those who wish to make legal use of your work? If so, what kind of system would help them to navigate these barriers and be equitable to you, the creator?

What other issues or challenges occur regularly enough in protecting your intellectual property that you believe they warrant greater attention from lawmakers?

There may well be extensive shifts in the way we approach copyright in future, both legally and conceptually. The fundamental goals of copyright, however, have been enshrined in our constitution for 225 years and will always be the basis of legislation.

Rather than misleading rumours, let’s focus on these fundamentals and how we can get to the promised land of copyright law, which allows art to be as free as artists allow, while compensating creators in a transparent and timely way.

It might seem we have a long way to go, but to quote Mr. Marvin Gaye once more: “Ain’t no mountain high enough, to keep me from you”!

If you’ve ever wondered how so much music can be played by radio stations and used in media productions such as movies and documentaries, Neil Young and a few fellow classic acts are about to blow the lid off the licensing process.

Along with Bonnie Raitt, The Doors, and Journey – all of whom are represented by the same music publishing company – the iconic songwriter has withdrawn from an organization called the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), which means that their music is no longer pre-cleared for use in the situations described above.

The most visible fallout of this decision comes from the BBC, who last week issued an alert to employees warning against using the music of these four artists in a wide range of scenarios. From radio play and samples to covers and lyrics, the move bans usage in all but essential cases, for which the organization will be required to contact publisher Sharandall Music before to negotiate an appropriate fee and conditions of use.

If this sounds unusual, it’s because the system for music licensing has long been tilted in favor of pre-cleared use. The aforementioned MCPS explains all on its site, covering the prevailing system to which most artists sign up so that they at least get paid something. As the BBC’s reaction to the withdrawal of these artists shows, the way things are currently set up make it very costly to withdraw from the system, even if the lack of control or ability to set one’s own fee doesn’t exist.

An essential part of this topic is to understand that the music in question isn’t banned, as many report headlines have termed it, at least as far as the artists are concerned. As the publisher of the four acts in question explains, the songs are simply not pre-approved for use without the artists or their representatives giving the green light.

We’ve been through what creative advocates term fair pay for fair play before, and this is an issue that fits right into that effort.

For his part, Neil Young has chimed in that this move, alongside his decision to opt out of streaming (see right), is all about sound quality and retaining a certain quality control.

Thekey word here is control.

People can criticize Neil’s decision as much as they want, primarily because they have a right to free speech and can exercise that right at any time.

Young and many other artists simply want to exercise their right to control where their music ends up and, in some cases, how it is experienced. This is a fundamental principle of copyright, which traces back to the founding principals of our Constitution. We defend our First Amendment rights with all the tenacity that forged this country in the first place, so why not exert similar levels of energy protecting our artists and their right to protect the value of what they create?

We need seasoned musicians like Young and co, as well as current megastars like Taylor Swift, to stand up for creative rights. Artists should have an experienced voice to speak out and take action on issues that matter to musicians, like the right to control usage, fees, and assert their own value on songs they write.

Admittedly a system that facilitates blanket use is easier for media and could be acceptable to artists, providing the fee is appropriate and terms/limits on use are set based on the requirements of the individual artist. Unfortunately calls for such a system, no matter how technically feasible in the digital era, often go unanswered.

If it takes artists of a different generation to marshall their fans and have the media highlight their cause, we can only thank them for trying to pave the way for rising artists who cannot afford to operate outside the existing system.

If you had assumed the future of payment technology was all about the flick of a wrist or the scan of a finger, think again. A new experiment from major payment brand Mastercard would see users paying with their face.

That’s right, after quivering last week at the prospect of Facebook pulling our half-covered faces out of a crowd and tagging up the images, this week we see excitement at the idea of offering the same data to all kinds of retailers voluntarily.

The Mastercard initiative is new to payment technology, but has been an option on enough recent laptop and mobile devices that it isn’t a fully fledged leap forward.

Add to this the fact that Mastercard is also promoting fingerprint ID and we have a variety of new identification methods in the pipeline, many of which focus on parts of the body as a unique key to prove who we are. If you’ve ever lost your driving license you’ll realize how important these developments could be, as most people tend to take their fingers, eyes and other facial features with them, wherever they go.

This is good news because, in reality, it is likely to be some combination of biometric scanning and personal identification that becomes the norm. As we examined recently, having several methods of authentication means that companies can offer a choice of ways to identify ourselves. Consumers can be a picky, frustrating bunch, so more options – and combinations of options – can only be a good thing for the masses.

For those uncomfortable with having a facial scan just to pay for a gallon of milk at the local grocery store, it seems likely that less personal measures will be offered.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, the likes of banks and medical facilities will be attracted to multi-factor authentication as a way to improve security standards. When it comes to protecting our money and taking care of those in pain, people tend to be more understanding of burdensome security procedures.

Where the majority of businesses in between land is anyone’s guess, but it’s a fair assumption that they will have to lead consumers there themselves. When it comes to securing our personal data, we tend to be our own worst enemy. And knowing how most people dislike change, it could be a rough ride for retailers to evolve our behavior at the checkout, even if it involves taking a selfie.